O, Whatever

And that bridge you want to sell me? I’m burning it down. It’s just a tightrope, anyway, my tiny umbrella lost overboard, and the word trapeze misspelled so long, I forgot its first meaning: “That which encourages the mouse to lay its head down to be snapped off by the spring.” (Early summer at the latest.) How does anyone cut their losses? In quarters, with no crusts, like a fluffernutter, gluing your mouth closed. (Probably the best strategy.) Dead horses…Boxer will work harder…Felix, Oscar, barnacle glue. The pinball of the mind, the Coney Island of Coney Island, the awful poem she read me in her pretentious voice while sitting on the edge of my bed. A key to a safe deposit box in the vault of a bank that failed. Have some more carbon dioxide, everybody — it’s on me!

Well, that was a good intermission. Better than the play, I’d say — so on-the-nose it punched you squaw in the face, just like a knock-knock joke, and yes, I am grateful that you didn’t say orange. I will buy your Samoas. Your islands denuded of monkey trees; your hickory farms and your chess kings; your food courts, where you are sentenced to brutal diarrhea, a Bosch breaking rocks in the sun. Another ten museums and you’re done. Vaporetto. Outie.